Zentrum für Europäische Integrationsforschung Center for European Integration Studies Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn D i s c Glen D. Camp u s The End of the Cold War and US-EU-Relations s i o n P a ISSN 1435-3288 ISBN 3-936183-22-8 p Zentrum für Europäische Integrationsforschung e Center for European Integration Studies Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn r Walter-Flex-Straße 3 Tel.: +49-228-73-1880 D-53113 Bonn Fax: +49-228-73-1788 C122 Germany http: //www.zei.de 2003 Glen D. Camp, AB, MPA, Ph.D., Professor for Political Science at Bryant College. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1964 and his Master’s in Public Administration from the Kennedy School in 1960. He served in the U.S. Information Agency (USIA) in Austria and Germany and in the U.S. Foreign Aid Agency (AID) in Washington. He is on the board of directors of several US foreign policy organizations in Rhode Island and is a long-term member of Amnesty International USA. Recent publications: “Policy Implications of the East Mediterranean Situation,” The Cyprus Review, vol. 14, no. 2, (Spring 2002); “The Cyprus Problem: A Cold War Legacy,” in Global Dialogue, vol. 3, no. 4 (autumn, 2001); “Island Impasse: Peacemaking on Cyprus, 1980- 1994,” Ch. 8 of Cyprus and Its People, Westview Press (1998); U.S. State Department, Ch. 5; Perspectives on Negotiation, Ch. 5, “U.N. Efforts at Mediation” (1986); “Soviet Asian Policy and the anti-Soviet Entente,” in Ch. 4 of Hsiung & Chai (eds.), Asia and U.S. Foreign Policy, Praeger (1981); “Greek-Turkish Conflict over Cyprus,” Politi- cal Science Quarterly (Spring, 1980). Glen D. Camp The End of the Cold War and US-EU-Relations Introduction We begin with a version of our preferred theoretical approach of Political Culture1 applying it to U.S. foreign policy formulation on the one hand, and the nascent European Union Common Defense and Security Policy (CDSP) as well as its most recent “Rapid Reaction Force” (RRF) developments on the other. We also suggest that the modern nation-state is one form of eth- nocentrism, which arises from a primordial human urge to live together as social animals in Aristotle’s terminology. We suggest that the nation-state is only one of many theoretically possible forms of ethnocentrism, as “weak” or “failed” states and empires also exist. We see the modern “na- tion” as the creation of the modern state and not vice versa. We are there- fore of the “modernist” school which differs from the primordialist and perennialist schools of thought in that modern nations as forms of social cohesion are by no means a matter of historical necessity. Some form of 1 See Jeffrey S. Lantis, “Strategic Culture and National Security Policy,” Interna- tional Studies Review (vol. 4, issue 3), fall, 2003, pp. 87-113. For an interesting book review analyzing the role of political culture and other forms of political and economic development in the ex-Soviet world, cf. Troy McGrath, “From Commu- nism to Capitalism: Liberalization, Learning, and the Long Road,” ibid., pp. 167- 179. For an interesting application of “Political Culture” to recent US foreign pol- icy, cf. Ch. 8, “Americans’ Values, Beliefs, and Preferences: Political Culture and Public Opinion in [US-GC] Foreign Policy,” in Eugene R. Wittkopf, Charles W. Kegley, Jr., & James M. Scott, American Foreign Policy (Thomson/Wadsworth), 2003, 6th Ed., especially pp. 248-250. Glen D. Camp social cohesion larger than the family is in our view a matter of historical necessity, but the nation-state is the form which actually dominates. Thus even though nations are “natural” in the sense of fulfilling the historical human need for some form of social cohesion transcending the family, they are not “inevitable” in our view. Again, this issue lies beyond the specific purview of our paper. But a brief review of the work of theorists of nation formation and in the case of the European Union, supranational entity for- mation, is fundamental to understanding our paper.2 Walter Lippmann notes in chapter two of his classic, U.S. Foreign Policy3 “The fundamental principle of a foreign policy”: “The thesis of this book is that a foreign policy consists in bringing into bal- ance, with a comfortable surplus of power in reserve, the nation’s commit- 2 A useful review of this difficult topic is found in Vojin Rakic, “Theories of Nation Formation and Case Selection: The Meaning of an Alternative Model” in Nationali- ties Papers, vol. 26, no. 4 (1998), pp. 599-613. In this comparison of various theo- ries, Rakic considers inter alia the differing views of Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities (London: Verso), 1983; Rupert Emerson, From Empire to Nation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard), 1960; Ernest Gellner, Nations and Nationalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell), 1983; Hans Kohn, The Idea of Nationalism (New York: Macmillan), 1945; Anthony D. Smith, The Ethnic Origins of Nations (Oxford: Blackwell), 1986 and Pierre Van den Berghe, Race and Ethnicity (New York: Basic Books, 1970. Although a discussion of political culture as the basis of foreign and domestic policy is also outside the purview of this paper, a few bibliographical citations may be appropriate. Basing their views on Almond and Verba’s study of five cultures published in 1963 (Gabriel A. Almond & Sidney Verba, The Civic Culture, Politi- cal Attitudes in Five Nations (Boston: Little, Brown & Co.), 1965); Almond and Powell argue, “A political culture is a particular distribution of political attitudes, values, feelings, information and skills.” Gabriel A. Almond, G. Bingham Powell Jr., (eds.), 3rd Ed. Comparative Politics Today: A World View (Glenview, Illinois: Scott, Foresman, 1984), p. 37b. Based on rather sophisticated statistical longitudinal studies, Inglehart concludes that Almond and Verba were right… and enduring cross-cultural differences [between countries-GC] exist and can be measured and further that “political culture is a crucial link between economic development and democracy.” (Ronald Inglehart, “The Renaissance of Political Culture,” American Political Science Review, December, 1988, pp. 1204-1219, passim. See also an un- published MS by Glen D. Camp, “Political Culturalist Explanations and the East European ‘Sea Change’: Is a Predictive or Explanatory Model Possible?” prepared for the New England Studies Association, 04/13/91. 3 Walter Lippmann, U.S. Foreign Policy: Shield of the Republic (NY: Pocket Books, 1943), pp. 6-7 [bolding and ital. added-GC]. 4 The End of the Cold War & US-EU Relations ments and the nation’s power… The statesman of a strong country may balance its commitments at a high level or at a low, but whether he is conducting the affairs of Germany, which has had dynamic ambitions, or the affairs of Swit- zerland, which seeks only to hold what it already has, or of the United States, he must still bring his ends and means into balance. If he does not, he will fol- low a course that leads to disaster. “(ital. added-GC) In sum, Lippmann argues that a prudent foreign policy requires that na- tional foreign policy ends must be tailored to national means, i.e., means and ends must be in balance. The temptation by an activist U.S. administra- tion is usually to “bite off more than it can comfortably chew”-regardless of the moral issues involved-as in Vietnam and perhaps in Iraq. This leads to our first problem: has the US in its recent foreign policy, via its own ex- penditures and “side payments” made to its various allies, engaged in “imperial overstretch”? Or is it strong enough, wise enough, and effective enough to handle both domestic and foreign commitments?4 Paul Kennedy argues for “imperial overstretch”5 Other students of current US policy, while demanding strong US support for coalition partners such as the EU and NATO, deny any relative decline in US power. Joseph S. Nye, Jr., for example, denies the probability of “a Roman fate for the United States” (i.e., collapse from internal ‘rot’: “I will show that at the beginning of the 4 Side payments are described and analyzed in William H. Riker, The Theory of Po- litical Coalitions (New Haven/London, 1962), pp. 105-106, pp. 115-20, and pp. 120-123. For Riker’s putative limits on side payments, cf. p. 129. 5 Joseph S. Nye, Jr., The Paradox of American Power, Why the World’s only Super- power Can’t Go It Alone (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002), p. 112. On the U.S. in relative decline, see Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, Eco- nomic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (NY: Vintage Books, 1987), pp. 514-535, “The United States: The Problem of Number One in Relative Decline.” For Kennedy’s theory of “imperial overstretch” and the concomitant problem of relating commitments to resources noted by Lippmann as well as the new problem of nuclear holocaust as the number of nuclear powers inevitably grows; cf. Kennedy, ibid. , pp. 514-515. In this passage Kennedy seems to wonder- as do we- whether US political leaders can handle the resulting “triple threat” of “imperial overstretch,” commitments beyond US resources, and nuclear prolifera- tion all at the same time. Cf. also Charles Tilly’s provocative review of Motyl’s in- complete “explanation” of The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires in Alex- ander J. Motyl’s, Imperial Ends: The Decay, Collapse, and Revival of Empires (NY: Columbia Univ. Press), 2001. 5 Glen D. Camp new century, such evidence is slim.”6 Much as we respect our former Dean, we must disagree. We find both statistical and anecdotal evidence point in the opposite direction.